Our Next Chapter at Etsy: A Letter to the Community - <AUTHOR> http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2011/our-next-chapter-at-etsy/

<comment><USER3> This is an interesting change.

First, anyone would be a better CEO than Rob Kalin. The period when he was _not_ CEO at Etsy was blissful by comparison... for once, the company was being run by someone mature and normal, someone with actual experience working at a professional company, whose goal was to serve customers and investors. Kalins goals are mainly self aggrandizement and extracting revenge for sitting alone during lunch at 6th grade, as far as I can tell. His actions and writing give me the impression of someone who is mentally unstable and has adjustment difficulties. He is given to grandiose flights of fancy where he places Etsy (and #1, himself) at the center of an imaginary cultural revolution which will topple Wal-Mart. It was never clear if this was a total sham, or whether he believes it himself, but these self indulgent rants distract from the actual purpose of Etsy, which should be providing a superior service selling arts and crafts. As a long term Etsy customer, I have had absolutely no respect for the company's management for years. The direction Kalin has taken the company in since returning as CEO seems to be investor-driven ('social commerce') and as an Etsy shop owner, I am not impressed.

Chad Dickerson has done an adequate job as COO. I can't say I'm blown away with Etsy's achievements, their staff or their engineering culture, but they've managed to keep the site running. On a technical (server) level, Etsy is fast and responsive. While many of their changes and improvements have a somewhat amateurish feel in the product and web design, I believe the technical underpinnings are sound. However, the culture of 'we push 900 changes a day!!! our PMs and Dotty dog push code lol!!' would impress me more if the site was 100% reliable. The API is a mild disaster and in my opinion, the people running that project are not qualified (it's written in PHP, we should note).

So, good luck Chad. You couldn't do a worse job than Rob Kalin. I think you're a nice person. Etsy seems to be entirely in the thrall of investors and techies these days, and the employees appear to have no understanding of who their customers are. I hope you can change this.

<comment><AUTHOR> Have to disagree with you on the API. The implementation seems fine to me - would like to know specific issues you have with it.

I am also curious as to why you single out PHP. Every language has its place and I don't see how this particular choice is cause for such revulsion. While its trendy these days to just bash PHP cos its, well, PHP, I don't think thats your angle here.

<comment><USER4> If you're like Facebook and started out with PHP, built your own compiler for it, and have a brilliant engineering team that regularly comes out with products like Haystack or Cassandra, then go ahead use PHP.

But you're not Facebook are you? You're not the go-to source for graduates in the top of their class. You're seeing incredible traffic, and the original source is not a wet pile of spaghetti mushing up every improvement you try to make.

Perhaps then its fair to say you shouldn't have used PHP, and instead used a language that was a better fit for _your organizations structure and practices at scale_.

<comment><AUTHOR> Your reply gives the impression that you might think that I work at Etsy - <USER2> don't.

No one here has cited examples of how Etsy's API has failed. At least, nothing substantive. I'd love to see examples as the few times I have used it, its worked fine.

I guess the questions are:

      - (1) If Etsy's API is defective, then what makes it so?

      - (2) What potion of the blame lies with the language it was written in?

Anyone?

<comment><USER3> Not sure why my response wasn't enough to provide insight that your brief examination of their API has not. Nor do I understand why you'd like to focus on examining that one statement I made along with what was intended to be a brief aside. My aim was to raise the question of how well the API program has worked out for Etsy and developers overall. Whether the design of their API is technologically sound or whether PHP is a good choice or played a role in their API's successes or failures is only part of that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Congrats to Chad and to Etsy. He's created what appears to be one hell of a great engineering culture that has helped to nurture a great community culture.

He gave a keynote at RailsConf this year about engineering for happiness, which is worth the watch if you haven't seen it: <http://blog.chaddickerson.com/2011/05/20/railsconf/>

</comment><comment><USER6> This is _good_ news. Chad will be the type of CEO that understands code and how innovation in that area will lead to new opportunities for Etsy. The history of the Internet is littered with great dot-com ideas that were ruined by clueless CEOs. Chad has done a great job in building an awesome engineering team at Etsy. I think the challenge going forward is to increase the marketing and awareness of what Etsy offers.

<comment><USER3> I like Chad and feel comfortable with him in this position. It's just sinking in for me how awesome this is compared to having the previous occupant in this seat.

I don't think Etsy needed more techies or investors in control, though: Etsy needs someone who understands what it is like to be an individual who is supported by an art or craft business. The best thing that could happen at this point would be for Chad to take a year off and try to make enough money to pay his rent by selling ceramic mustaches from an Etsy shop.</comment></comment>


Yelp: Slow Growth Lessons - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/startup-study-group/slow-growth-lessons-in-a-hack-assed-world-28d9c557969b <comment><USER2> For years, I've done the following on every yelp search: filter -> sort by -> rating.

I would probably jailbreak my phone just to be able to lock that preference in. Of course, there's a lot of money in that search option being default set to 'best' or 'recommended' or whatever it is they call it.

And, it's of course awesomely useful, and I use it constantly. But I never don't sort, that's a testament to how useful the database they've built is. It's worth like triple the effort of another search method to get the data.

<comment><USER3> i think you meant

      filter -> open now -> sort by -> rating

;)

<comment><USER2> I like to imagine I'm out at odd hours and really need to know who's open for my post-pub-crawl food. I'm going to click that as well from now on.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Sounds like a lot of marketing speak from a site that rewards a lot of review writers like myself with censorship. Once they started censoring my honest reviews, I realized the site's information was no longer useful and generally, this is proven by their rather inaccurate reviews.

<comment><USER5> I have a friend who is a restaurant owner. From what i've heard, their business model is to display the worst reviews and then try to extort the business owner in order to display better ones. They wanted something to the tune of several thousand dollars. He called them 'The Yelp Mafia.'

<comment><USER6> Debunked many many times. Michael Luca at HBS is one such study. Sales at Yelp has no ability to influence reviews, and Yelp employees are not allowed to even write reviews anymore.

[http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/12/harvard-study- debunks-y...](http://officialblog.yelp.com/2013/12/harvard-study-debunks-yelp- extortion-conspiracy-theory-yelp-doesnt-extort.html)

<comment><USER4> The most plausible explanation is that their content filtering system is just badly written and obviously can't discern between spam and real-life input, despite all usage patterns, history, and content pointing to a human. Whatever the reason, who wants to create content for a site that will then just censor it?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Slightly off-topic, but a couple of years ago I had an epiphany regarding Yelp's name. My conversation with a tech-savvy friend went something like this:

me: I realized that "Yelp" is like the "Yellow Pages".

friend: No duh.

me: No, the _name_ "Yelp" is like " _YEL_ lo _P_ ages". It's basically a portmanteau. [1]

friend: mind = blown

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmanteau)</comment>


Apple's Cleverest - And Most Annoying - Marketing Gimmick - <AUTHOR> http://www.businessinsider.com/apples-cleverest-and-most-annoying-marketing-gimmick-2010-12 <comment><USER2> We should start worrying only when Steve calls an iProduct "my wife".</comment>


Online Luggage Startup Away Says CEO Is Stepping Down - <AUTHOR> https://www.wsj.com/articles/online-luggage-startup-away-says-ceo-is-stepping-down-11575930577 <comment><USER2> Cache: [http://archive.is/uehXU#selection-1883.5-1883.58](http://archive.is/uehXU#selection-1883.5-1883.58)

</comment><comment><USER3> Bitter words of ex-employees.

Failed with Jeff Bezos of Amazon.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside- amazon-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/technology/inside-amazon- wrestling-big-ideas-in-a-bruising-workplace.html)

Some people I knew bought Amazon shares after the NY Times piece came out.</comment>


Ask HN: How did you learn Perl/Shell Scripting? - <AUTHOR>

Please suggest Links, Books & Blogs (if possible). <comment><USER2> Aside from the typical methods I used to pick up other languages (trial and error, practicing with sample projects, banging my head against the desk), the two most helpful resources I found were the book Modern Perl ([http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl/chapter_00.html...](http://modernperlbooks.com/books/modern_perl/chapter_00.html\)and) a site I stumbled upon titled "Learn Perl in about 2 and a half hours" ([http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html](http://qntm.org/files/perl/perl.html)).

</comment><comment><USER3> From the perl man page (back when it was all one page)

When I was a student I took an internship at a small software company in the English countryside.

I was given the task of fixing 100 or so Oracle Forms (version 3, still based on green screen technology). A field in the database was being resized from 1 to 2 characters, and I had to fix the display layouts and any related variable declarations in the code.

The Oracle forms editor had a terrible UI, I had to navigate around the form and drill down in each block or UI element to see the related code. There's wasn't much of a search facility. After a bit I decided there had to be a better way.

I started by grepping the forms files, to see where the code was referenced. This helped, but didn't tell me where in the form the code was, so I still had to navigate around the form looking for the places it was used.

I'm not sure why I picked up on perl, but I printed out 90-odd pages from man, spent some time reading through, and came up with a script that did a high- level parse of all the form files and told me which forms and code blocks contained references to the field.

The other developers thought that this task would keep the intern distracted for a few weeks, but I finished within a few days.

So they game me another pile of more complex changes to do. Sigh...

Other than that the Camel book is good, and the perl Cookbook.

</comment><comment><USER4> I learned shell scripting mostly from... actually using the shell as the mothership of mostly any activity I undertake on my machines, be it at work or at home.

The experience you gain by trying not to repeat yourself carries over into scripting, especially if you already know regular imperative programming constructs: you can then just look up how a specific construct is implemented in your shell of choice.

I daily (or maybe hourly) use flow control constructs inline in shell commands, making heavy use of I/O redirection, exit statuses, etc. I've been doing this for over ten years now and I'm still progressing, finding more efficient ways of doing things (currently trying to make a habit of using ZSH's advanced globbing capabilities).

If you run a barebones keyboard-oriented desktop environment / window manager (I use wmii) it becomes very attractive to not have to take your fingers off the keyboard; each little efficiency increment is its own reward. But it's the slow path.

But you asked for links, books and blogs, not my personal experience ;-)

This blog is has some OK articles on Perl/Shell:

[http://www.catonmat.net/blog/](http://www.catonmat.net/blog/)

</comment><comment><USER5> FYI, Perl not PERL.

Perl -> Programming Perl & Perl Cookbook. Unsure how relevant these still are as "Modern Perl" is the big paradigm now.

Shell -> UNIX Shell Programming by Stephen Kochan. I got around in shell before this, but his book make me effective and competent.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks.

Yes, it is Perl.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> The book that really helped me out the most with Perl was "Effective Perl Programming" (aka "Silver Ball" due to the original cover). Here's a link: [http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Perl-Programming- Idiomatic-D...](http://www.amazon.com/Effective-Perl-Programming-Idiomatic- Development/dp/0321496949)

The thing I liked most about that book was that it really helped me get a grasp on Perl idioms and start writing decent, readable Perl code. The thing you'll find out quickly about Perl is that it can be much easier to write than it is to read. I've written more than my fair share of Perl code which I've let rot for a while, tried coming back and reading and been left scratching my head.

</comment><comment><USER7> I cant speak for Perl but when it comes to bash/shell scripting, I've got a few links for you :)

First have look at the Linux Document Project ([http://www.tldp.org/guides.html](http://www.tldp.org/guides.html)), the Bash Guides are really good, thats how I first got started. Also, for bash once you've gone through the guides, download the source (apt-get source bash if your own a debian based distro) and checkout the test suite, this will give you a good look at the internals.

Also be sure to memorize the ins and outs of the the man command :)

Best of luck

</comment><comment><USER8> I learned Perl initially for sysadmin'ing from Minimal Perl ([http://www.amazon.com/Minimal-Perl-Unix-Linux- People/dp/1932...](http://www.amazon.com/Minimal-Perl-Unix-Linux- People/dp/1932394508)). It teach a subset of Perl necessary to use it as a more powerful replacement for awk/sed/grep/find, primarily with one-liners. By far the best bang/buck of any programming book I've ever read.

</comment><comment><USER9> I learned perl from the camel and llama books, but I think there are probably better resources these days.

I don't remember when I first started learning bash... I found some gems in the Advanced Bash Scripting guide ([http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/](http://www.tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/)) but that's probably not the place to start (and I've recently heard some criticism of it).</comment>


Visual Studio Code Condensed - <AUTHOR> http://www.dotnetcurry.com/visualstudio/1340/visual-studio-code-tutorial <comment><USER2> how is the python support? Is it better than PyCharm and VIM.</comment>


Why aren't there more women in tech? I'll tell you why I'm not (2012) - <AUTHOR> http://www.sarahmoran.com.au/2012/why-arent-there-more-women-in-tech-ill-tell-you-why-im-not/

<comment><USER2> This is interesting, but I honestly don't see why this has to be gender- specific. I had very similar experiences as a male, from primary school all the way to university. I don't think it's fair (or honest) to expect other people to take care of "the transfer of knowledge" as if the duty were one- sided. I personally learnt pretty quickly that if I wanted something (learning included), then the responsibility and the motivation were mine and mine only. A teacher, or school, is a mean to an end, but by no mean an end in itself.

There is one point in this article however that somewhat confirms an idea I've had for a while. I too have been wondering for a long time what drives women away from tech (or not drive them in). After many a conversation, the only half-decent conclusion I came to was that many women see a lack of creativity in the tech sector. It's true that a lot of sciences are pretty dry on the surface, but at the same time, so is learning classical music (for example), and that doesn't seem to deter women nearly as much (I don't have any numbers for this mind you).

I'm not completely sure what I'm trying to get at here. I guess I'm just wondering how the dryness is somehow more appealing to men and less so to women, or maybe how genders perceive/experience creativity.

<comment><USER3> For this author, it wasn't the creativity, but how social the field that motivated this author.

From the article:

SOCIAL VALUE

"This added a social element to maths that I really enjoyed. Most of these kids then moved to other schools, and particularly to the local school that opened a class for bright kids. But I sure as shit wasn't leaving my friends!"

"But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from friends."

"In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in science. It was social suicide, but luckily I fell in with some amazing women in the year above me and always sat at the back of the class which eventually leant me to (almost) social acceptance across both grades."

"It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent (yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social resume."

"So: after so much discouragement, social outcasting and lack of appeal to my introverted self, my pre-tertiary education beat the passion out my left brain entirely."

"Socially, the path to becoming a female tech pioneer from here on out could be a struggle for me personally."

"it was painful to be good at something, love it, but to then be punished for it in the schoolyard. I'm a social butterfly, dammit!"

CREATIVITY

The only time she says non-math was creative was, "My English classes were creative: my maths classes were often silent." But if you read on, it was still because creativity was social. "People talking at me, rather than nutting things out with the person next to me, drove me crazy in my maths classes."

Nevertheless, the author found self-creativity in computing:

"I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called) when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn't take the project seriously, and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn't challenging and technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn't want it fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would say "Write a better brief, dude.""

FURTHER CONSIDERATION

It's reaching to extrapolate one person's life to the whole population. Nevertheless, while there are numerous theories of why gender differences persist in STEM, education, etc., I personally am convinced significant statistical improvement in the gender balance in STEM could be made by emphasizing the social value of STEM fields.

If you are interested, others have claimed the social quality to be the _dominating_ factor in the female participation across all undergraduate degrees. For instance:

"Research has shown that women tend to gravitate towards fields of studies and career paths where they can have a positive social impact and work with others, often collaboratively," says Linda Basch, president of the National Council for Research on Women (NCRW). "This is why you see so many women in the fields of health care and education. When women do gravitate toward the sciences, it is usually the life sciences."

Source (with interesting statistics of top 10 degrees by gender as well): [http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors- women...](http://www.forbes.com/2010/03/02/top-10-college-majors-women-forbes- woman-leadership-education.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Much of what she lines out isn't necessarily related to gender. Any kind of creative type will find dry CS classes boring. As someone else points out, the fact that the teacher that almost failed her was a male is completely tangential to the story.

A better title for this article would be "Why aren't there more people with similar interests and motivations as me in tech?".

</comment><comment><USER5> I'm a bit tired of this discussion. I personally don't see women being excluded from tech other than their interests lie elsewhere and have not chosen to pursue this career. As far as I see, the door is open and techie personas tend to be some of the most open minded and less judgemental departments.

I want good designers/programmers, male or female, not someone that is there to prove a point. And if so important why is this discussion so dominated across tech jobs. I rarely see articles deriding the lack of men in nursing and never for HR departments. The latter I find amusing as HR are often the department driving this campaign when their department has to be the most gender skewed in every company I have worked for.

</comment><comment><USER6> Excerpt:

 _I had a male teacher give me a near-fail (pass minus I think it was called) when I built my first HTML site. He said I didn't take the project seriously, and I said I wanted to be creative about it because it wasn't challenging and technically I did nothing wrong – the code was perfect. If you didn't want it fluro pink and with unicorns, then you should have said so. These days I would say "Write a better brief, dude."_

I hope it generates discussion.

<comment><USER7> Teachers (male and female) typically reward boys for technical competence, and girls for "effort" (polish, pink unicorns, etc).

<comment><USER8> My sister and I (mathematically and technically inclined) would always get this. I would always think that this was to help those that were not academic still get points for effort.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> tl;dr: The culture of tech was boring compared to other areas.

<comment><USER10> This aspect of the problem is underrated compared to others. Thankfully, there are a lot of strong admissions about it in this article, which is unfortunately not seen too often.

"But to be good at maths was to be in solitude – or elitist and removed from friends."

"It was my secret shame – hanging out with the most beautifully intelligent (yet socially inept) kids of the school did not bode well on my social resume."

"In high school I sat an IQ test and got accelerated in mathematics and in science. It was social suicide."

I have stressed this on HN before in articles about "why aren't there more women in tech" \-- one of the major un-addressed problems is that younger women don't think of tech as a cool thing to go into. Younger men don't mind being social outcasts as much, and tend to deal with the solitude that results from such activities, because they are often socially isolated _anyway_. If we want to get more women in tech, we have to make it socially _cool_ , not just socially acceptable.

I think this also explains why a lot of men have knee-jerk negative reactions to "we should do more to get women in tech" articles. They believe that suffering through all that social ostracism at school was the price they paid for getting into tech.

<comment><USER11> Except that has nothing to do with gender. It's just as "boring"/"uncool" for boys too. Boys are also discouraged from going into tech. Being good at math/science/technology skill are stereotyped as "nerd" and considered low- social status by our culture. I think this is even moreso for boys than girls but maybe it's both.

<comment><USER10> My hypothesis (although it is not proven by any means, it is somewhat bolstered by the social experiences of many men and women I have talked to about this) is that men prefer to take the social hit of being ostracized, since they work alone on their pursuits anyway, more often than women. (e.g. [http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why- wome...](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/why-women-prefer- working-together-and-why-men-prefer-working-alone/278888/))

Totally agree though, that both men and women do face this social ostracism, and that eliminating it would be hugely beneficial. I think we differ in the belief that it is the primary reason for the low number of women in the tech sector.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Using Maxima Output in Octave - <AUTHOR> http://math-blog.com/2011/01/31/using-maxima-output-in-octave/ <comment><USER2> Nice post, I've used Maxima for symbolic calculations since 2000 and I can say it was a great help during my student life :).

Since Maxima is based on Common Lisp, I think it will be an interesting application to translate directly, using a Lisp macro for example, the Fortran output generated by Maxima to a Matlab compatible expression. Not sure how easy it will be to implement this functionality, but sure it will be a nice addition to Maxima.

<comment><USER3> Maxima is extremely hackable, because it's entirely written in Lisp. I remember making modifications to the tex() function some years ago because it didn't use the particular notation that I liked, and it wasn't hard at all.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Does anybody know how Maxima compares to Sage?

<http://sagemath.org/>

I got the impression that Maxima isn't being maintained very actively. Last release was 2009, apparently, but there may be more to that story.

<comment><AUTHOR> Sage uses Maxima among others open source packages [1]. You can think of it as a unified layer and language (Python) that enables you to use many open source mathematical programs behind the scenes.

[1] <http://sagemath.org/links-components.html>

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I was just wondering if there is a MATLAB compatible library for Control Toolkit in octave so I can use the code I write at school for learning at home.</comment>


Why Apple and Microsoft Are Healthier Than Facebook - <AUTHOR> https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-30/apple-and-microsoft-are-healthier-than-facebook <comment><USER2> Leadership starts with the top and the values of the company. There is a huge gap between the CEOs of Microsoft and Apple and Zuckerberg who has never understood the value of respecting boundaries. That culture likely permeates the whole company seen in their handling of partners, API permissions, privacy settings etc..

I doubt that Zuckerberg is able to fix the issues as he is at the root of it. Looks to me like the situation at Uber but with FB there may still something to be saved if they are moving fast.

<comment><USER3> I don't think Zuckerberg is as actively scummy as Kalanick was. Fixing this requires being very actively ethical and I think he's just falling short. I don't think Zuck is incapable he just needed this kick in the pants to do something.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> > In reality, Apple collects more information about its customers than > Facebook because it offers more products and services

The author seems to be conflating what's stored on the device with what's being "collected". There's a difference; with Facebook everything ends up on their servers, while with Apple much less does. If these companies were to be hacked tomorrow, with Apple the only information that would be made available is stuff that's been sent, such as iCloud data. Things that stay local, such as call history, would remain secure.

<comment><USER5> Can you explain a bit more? Apple iCloud services collect and upload a huge amount of data to Apple servers. Emails, calendars, tasks, your private messages (iMessage), phone diagnostic data, GPS location data (cell tower / wifi location helper service), SMS, MMS messages, application data and more.

Sure a lot of this is encrypted, but Apple explicitly warns you on support page that they WILL give iCloud data to authorities if warrant is sent.

Quote:

> iCloud content may include email, stored photos, documents, contacts, > calendars, bookmarks, Safari browsing history and iOS device backups. iOS > device backups may include photos and videos in the Camera Roll, device > settings, app data, iMessage, SMS, and MMS messages and voicemail. All > iCloud content data stored by Apple is encrypted at the location of the > server. When third-party vendors are used to store data, Apple never gives > them the keys. Apple retains the encryption keys in its U.S. data centres. > iCloud content, as it exists in the subscriber's account, may be provided in > response to a search warrant issued upon a showing of probable cause.

(Section G in [https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement- guidelin...](https://www.apple.com/legal/privacy/law-enforcement-guidelines- us.pdf) )

So why do you think there's a difference?

<comment><USER4> iOS device backups sort of poke a hole in my comment, since they by definition store essentially everything on your device that I said Apple keeps local. I'll fall back on a weaker argument, that Facebook collects similar information as well, especially if you've ever used an Android device.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, the fact that Facebook app is preloaded (with granted permissions!) on many Android phones is a huge issue.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Microsoft has processes in place to minimize business risk due to privacy and security problems (both usually go hand in hand). All engineers must go through regular training, and features must go through security and privacy reviews. In these reviews, systems and their threat boundaries are described as well as the data that flows over system boundaries or that are stored. PII (personally identifiable information) gets anonymized unless absolutely necessary (e.g. for a profile page). The mantra is that the engineers should trust the system to put their own data in. Then there is also GDPR which requires adding abilities to delete personal data on request, even if it is distributed into different systems. It's even tougher when it's about customer data (eg Office 365). That's an absolute black box, so to do ML on this data you might put training into a firewalled cloud and you might get a metric back, but there is no way of looking at any concrete data. So, MS treats the prospect of privacy breaches as an existential risk and acts accordingly. It has been this way for at least 10 years.

<comment><USER7> If it's so existentially important to them, why is OneDrive data in personal (paid) Office 365 accounts not encrypted at rest?

<comment> Const-me Why would you want them to?

Their web servers needs decrypted data in order to handle these office documents, so client side encryption is not an option.

Server side encryption, where the server knows the keys, serves very little purpose because the threats it protects against are extremely unlikely. What it's protecting against, armed robbery of the datacenter?

<comment><USER7> I want to be protected against the exact same attack vectors that Microsoft's business customers are protected against and the same attack vectors that all customers of Google, Apple or Dropbox are protected against.

Perhaps it's all just security theatre as you suggest, but I am not the one running these data centers, so if all these companies say there is a threat, then my instinct is to believe them.

<comment> Const-me > I want to be protected against the exact same attack vectors that > Microsoft's business customers are protected against

I don't think there're such attack vectors. The reasons MS doing that with the data of their business customers are legal, not technical.

They keep medical data, legal data, government data for many jurisdictions around the world. Before doing that, they had to comply with FIPS 140-2, HIPAA, and a whole bunch of others: [https://products.office.com/en- us/business/office-365-trust-...](https://products.office.com/en- us/business/office-365-trust-center-compliance-certifications)

> if all these companies say there is a threat

I can't remember them saying there is a threat, or mentioning what it is. I only heard them saying marketing BS about how safe my data will be on their servers.

<comment><USER7> _> I can't remember them saying there is a threat_

I doubt that any of them will ever publish their most detailed threat models.

If I had to guess, I would say the most likely threat is nosy or corrupt staff.

Protecting a key server is easier than protecting tens of thousands of servers and physical disks.

Legal requirements are not necessarily baseless either. They are in place to protect someone against something.

The data I have on these cloud services is extremely sensitive. All my identity documents, proof of address, examples of my signature, financial data, health data, etc. If someone were to get hold of these documents, they could steal all my money, my identity and make life hell for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> > Most people won't fiddle with the controls because they may not even realize > what all the fuss is about.

Good to see this _starting_ to become part of the discussion; that most users are not educated and motivated enough to take privacy seriously. I'd like to see regulation that makes "here - agree to this 200 page TOS" unacceptable as form of gaining user approval, especially - as in the case of Facebook - you're agreeing not only to sharing your own data but also data on friends who aren't even using Facebook.

<comment><USER9> > I'd like to see regulation that makes "here - agree to this 200 page TOS" > unacceptable as form of gaining user approval

Your wish is my command!

[https://www.eugdpr.org/the-regulation.html](https://www.eugdpr.org/the- regulation.html) (see Consent)

<comment><USER8> That's a great start! Haven't yet looked seriously at the details of GDPR - good to see it going that way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Idk about Microsoft, of all the personal assistants, Cortana is batshit insane. Furthermore their Quantum team is the only one yet to produce a Qbit while IBM is using 50. The last decade of Microsoft acting like the college one and done has depleted its ability to innovate. Nevertheless, at least they still rely on tangible assets to turn a profit.

<comment><USER11> Regarding Qbits, the number doesn't mean much. Error rate is far more important. Microsoft hasn't yet created a real-world topological qbit, but they have much-improved noise properties in theory.

<comment><AUTHOR> Tree span is better.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> The article conflates the encrypted binary blobs which are your iCloud backups, with the kind of structured data Facebook gathers. They are not remotely comparable.

<comment><USER13> Encryption is meaningless from a privacy perspective when they also store the keys on their servers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> "In reality, Apple collects _more_ information about its customers than Facebook because it offers more products and services."

Was/is all that data collection necessary?

Did they (or Microsoft) make decisions about data collection based on perceived competition from Facebook or Google.

Considering e.g. how ads were integrated into MS software products (e.g. the "free" versions of Office software that appeared a number of years ago) I think the answer is yes, at least for MS.

I believe all these companies (AAPL, MS, FB, GOOG, AMZN, a few others) react to each other and often adjust their short-term and long-term goals accordingly, even when they might be thought _not_ to be competing.

<comment><USER15> They show ads, but not based on your detailed personal profile, or content of your mail and things like that. Microsoft is a software company, not an ad company. I remember Microsoft making a big deal out of that at one point, saying that Google "reads" your email and stuff. That was really quite long ago, now things are even more personalized for Google and FB, whereas Apple and Microsoft has never been so deeply involved in the personalized ads business. There core business models are different.

<comment><USER16> I'm pretty sure that changed with Windows 10 and telemetry you can't switch off completely.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> > Microsoft, with its cloud, software licensing and subscription businesses, > is even less likely to go rogue in data collection because it no longer has > a mobile platform to speak of.

But they have a desktop platform and they used it to go rogue with data collection, all the way. Just because they've failed on mobile doesn't automatically make them a privacy-oriented company.

<comment><USER18> Microsoft is a company that in their very long history, has repeatedly pushed legal boundaries at the expense of their business partners, their individual customers, and the software ecosystem. But the company has(had?) a very different mode of operation than Facebook or Apple. Neither of the two lines above sound like M$ft here.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> > "The truth is, we could make a ton of money if we monetized our customer — > if our customer was our product," Cook said on Wednesday. "We've elected not > to do that."

You elected to pocket up to 30 % of all app revenue generated from your users and their data ($11.5 billion in 2017). How is that not monetizing your users?

<comment><USER20> It's monetizing developers, not users. They collect nothing whatsoever from free apps.

<comment><USER19> You could also say: Facebook is monetizing advertisers, not users. And: They collect nothing whatsoever from free social media marketing.

The point is that Apple has users and user data, and companies come to Apple to make money on their users while paying Apple to get access.

<comment><USER20> But that's backward, again. Apple is monetizing developers because the money comes from the users. Users pay to have access to the developers.

Facebook is monetizing users because the money comes from the advertisers. Advertisers pay to have access to the users.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Apple could have a similar situation. Via the iOS SDK, developers can ask for access for a phone's address book. These contact connections could be harvested by bad developers. They could also be sold by those developers. This is merely one example. All companies with data and APIs are vectors of attack.

<comment><USER22> The difference is that the data is on your phone, not Apple's servers (unless you back up with iCloud, but even then I believe it's encrypted). You can decide which apps to run on your device; you have no control over what Facebook does on its servers.

<comment><USER21> Definitely a difference but there is a similarity in vectors of attack: The contact address book can be taken off the phone using the Apple SDK. Then, that data can be anywhere the developer wants to store it.

<comment><USER23> It can only be taken off the phone if the user explicitly gives you access to it. And it's just contact info, not an "attack vector".

Are you really arguing developers shouldn't be allowed to write address book utilities on iOS?</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Feds Struggle to Stop Billions in Medicare Advantage Overbillings - <AUTHOR> https://khn.org/news/medicare-advantage-overbills-taxpayers-by-billions-a-year-as-feds-struggle-to-stop-it/ <comment><USER2> Medicare Advantage itself seems to be a scam.

When it came around, TV became saturated with ads aimed at seniors where the people would talk slow and try to sound sincere and you would just want to get Grandma away.

The "decision guides" that they send are thick but don't give any real information that would inform such a decision; it would be like looking at prepaid phones plan from Verizon and trying to guess which plan would be cheaper for you.

Supposedly Medicare Advantage is supposed to save money, but how can it when they give the insurers an extra 13% over the cost of the orginal medicaire benefit so they have a guaranteed profit? It's the kind of thing that makes sense to politicians and people like Cokie Roberts but not to anyone else -- and the kind of thing that damages the legitimacy of our government and other institutions.</comment>


Ask HN: how do mobile developers find clients? - <AUTHOR>

I started a small dev shop with a group of friends in NYC. We are 3 developers - we do APIs in Ruby or Scala and native iOS development. Our backgrounds are strong, and we have worked on some cool projects together and individually.
Since the summer we have had two bigger projects. Those clients are happy, but the work is winding down as we come to completion. They were both from previous connections that we had.
We are finding it hard to meet new clients for bigger projects. Is there a typical way to find clients? I go to meetups around NYC, but that doesn't seem to lead to anything.
Any advice would help. <comment><USER2> Shoot me a PM, I'd like to see your portfolio. I'm actually looking at mobile app shops right now.

It seems like every other nutter in NYC is looking for a tech co-founder; perhaps market yourself as a CTO-in-a-box?

<comment><AUTHOR> Hey Curll, send me an email and I'll pass you along our work. firstname.lastname@example.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> We're always looking for quality mobile developers on matchist (<http://matchist.com/talent>). We'll do our best to find you quality work with quality clients.

<comment><AUTHOR> I signed up a few days ago. Waiting on a reply.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can advertise for free on codejobs. Check it out here:

<http://orangethirty.github.com/codejobs>

</comment><comment><USER5> Cold call. Advertise. Network. Linkedin. Golf clubs. Recommendations.

Just pound the pavement every single day. There's no easier way.

<comment><AUTHOR> Golf clubs... that's an interesting idea.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Wake-On-LAN without public IP or port-forwarding - <AUTHOR> http://baconpi-jeffijoe.rhcloud.com/ <comment><USER2> So basically OpenWRT + "wol" package + google app engine. Write a google app engine script that takes a 'wake up machine' html form, write a bash script on OpenWRT that queries the script regularly, and run the "wol" client when you get a response. Seems useful.

<comment><AUTHOR> I was experimenting with new technologies for this project - yes, to get the core functionality sure this would work. In this case, I wanted to make something more... complete. The communication with the device uses websockets, not polling.

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> MAC addresses are bitstrings typically written in hex and should not be interpreted in a case-sensitive manner. You should also accept colons, dashes, or nothing as the byte separator.

<comment><AUTHOR> I'll look into that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> You can also use [http://www.smscmd.net/](http://www.smscmd.net/) to connect your raspberry pi/arduino/<insert device> using MQTT and then you can wake your device using SMS.

<comment><AUTHOR> Does it give you an online|offline status indication of your device?

Smart app though!

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> You should offer up an SD card image to download.

(No, I'm not going to tweet that at you.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Will work on that.

(Why was that last line necessary?)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: Build vs. buy? Or: How many logins are too much? - <AUTHOR> I'm a (software dev) contractor who has taken over IT operations for a services-based medical company with a mobile team that goes to customer locations.
I have built a custom web app for their business which handles the "core" of what they do. They often need new functionality to help employees do a better job, and every time this comes up I'm torn between building & buying. Some examples of functionality they've requested:
* Job dispatching (built into the web app)
* Time tracking for employees (bought 3rd-party software)
* Team communication (bought)
* Invoicing (built into the web app, due to custom processes)
* Managing a warehouse of supplies (bought)
I'm now faced with a new problem: Keeping track of expensive equipment that must change hands between employees.
None of our existing software handles this, so I'm stuck on build vs. buy.
On one hand: Employees already manage 4 logins for various services, so I'm hesitant to add another.
On the other hand: I'd like to avoid adding complexity to our existing software if it isn't necessary.
I work alone, so I'm reaching out to HN to see if there are any good resources, experiences, evaluation frameworks, etc. for making this decision for small businesses. Evaluating which is "better" feels like a shot in the dark. Thank you! <comment><USER2> Not a direct response but for the multiple login problem have you considered using some kind of ldap like active directory ?

<comment><AUTHOR> I have not, but thanks for the suggestion. I don't have much experience here, but I was under the impression that Active Directory was for Windows networks.

A detail I didn't include in my original post is that the primary devices used are Android tablets & phones. I don't know much about ldap in the mobile context (or in general, to be honest).

<comment><USER2> although active directory is installed on windows, many library allow to use it as a source of truth for authentication. But of course your apps need to be compatible with it (and if you don't want to install AD any other LDAP would work too if the apps are compatible).

Good luck with your search :)</comment></comment></comment>


Pete Seeger, Songwriter and Champion of Folk Music, Dies at 94 - <AUTHOR> http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/29/arts/music/pete-seeger-songwriter-and-champion-of-folk-music-dies-at-94.html

<comment><USER2> > In 1955 he was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, > where he testified, "I feel that in my whole life I have never done anything > of any conspiratorial nature." He also stated: "I am not going to answer any > questions as to my association, my philosophical or religious beliefs or my > political beliefs, or how I voted in any election, or any of these private > affairs. I think these are very improper questions for any American to be > asked, especially under such compulsion as this."

His mixture of politics, love, loss, and humor in his songs has always inspired me. He brings together traditions, mixes them up, fights the system, produces something beautiful. RIP.</comment>


BitTrust API makes developing apps that use Bitcoin a breeze - <AUTHOR> http://thenextweb.com/dd/2011/07/12/bittrust-api-makes-developing-apps-that-use-bitcoin-a-breeze/

<comment><USER2> Would this solve the real mistrust between bitcoin community members?

<comment><USER2> direct link to site <http://www.bittrust.org/>

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Whatever it solves, I would love to get in on it.</comment>


Copy of Declaration of Independence survived Civil War hidden behind wallpaper - <AUTHOR> http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-rare-copy-declaration-of-independence-20180218-story.html <comment><USER2> Interesting, article says the original is faded, so these copies are a better representation than the original for viewing.

The enhanced T in "The" is interesting, neat article.</comment>


Stephen Hawking outlines three theoretically realistic ideas for time travel - <AUTHOR> http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37018725/ns/technology_and_science-science/

<comment><USER2> Hawking didn't address the biggest problem, which, as everyone knows, is grammar:

" _The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you for instance how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. Most readers get as far as the Future Semi-Conditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up: and in fact in later editions of the book all the pages beyond this point have been left blank to save on printing costs._ "

</comment><comment><USER3> Naming time the "fourth dimension" is a misnomer, it's not a dimension in the usual sense of the. Hence the spacetime of relativity, formulated in Minkowski space, is different than standard 4-ED Euclidean space (see <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minkowski_space>).

As Einstein says, "Make things as simple as possible, but not any simpler." The time as fourth dimension thing, I think, is an example of a wrong analogy pushed to make it easy for people to understand what in effect is quite hard to grasp.

<comment><USER4> I always understood a dimension as "a variable that you can change to avoid occupying the spot." In 3d space, two objects cannot be in the same spot so either their x,y, or z coordinate must be different. If I add time as a fourth dimension then two objects can be at the same x,y and z, but not at the same time. You are right that time is a special dimension, but there are many things it has in common with the 3 spacial dimensions as well, my example being one.

<comment><USER3> You're right, in an intuitive sense. In math, especially dealing with weird stuff like extra dimensions, intuition may break down, though. For example, in the 4D Minkowski space you can have a unit sphere with a radius of -1! One has to understand what is meant when we say that "time is a special dimension". otherwise teh analogies we draw may fail. The Wikipedia article I linked explains these in a simple way.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I've never really understood why we shouldn't be able to travel backwards in time.

Most sci-fi movies and shows seem to represent time as a line. I think of our history as a line, but every step along that history had an infinite number of possibilities it could have gone. To travel back in time would be to move back along the timeline that our reality exists - but once at that point, simply by being there, you would never be able to move forward into the timeline you came from. You're now on a new timeline, and anything you do has no effect on the timeline you came from.

Also, I don't know about these forward "time travel" methods described in the article. By those definitions we are all time traveling right now - we are moving forward in time. Its just the idea that some people move at different speeds so that when you slow catch up to the speed of everyone else, you're now "in the future". Really you were always there, you were just moving at a different speed.

<comment><USER6> > I've never really understood why we shouldn't be able to travel backwards in > time.

Because time is not a place you can go to. Time is a measure how how fast the various reactions, and forces, and processes that make up your atoms, moves.

Those reactions can move faster, or slower. But there is no place you can go to to travel backward in time. Time is NOT a river or a line. Time is just a measure of how fast your reactions processed relative to the reactions of other things.

The reason time is sometimes talked about as a line is that it works mathematically. And the mathematics works if you reverse it too. But that doesn't mean the math has a physical reality.

<comment><USER5> Yeah I understand what you're saying from a practical approach. I'm looking at it more from a sci-fi (emphasis on FI) angle I guess. I don't really consider what you're talking about as "time travel" any more than how I traveled a minute or so into the future sitting here typing this.

When I said "I've never really understood why we shouldn't be able to travel backwards in time." I was referring to the statement from the article: "Ultimately, scientists may find that only travel into the future is possible, as the laws of nature may make travel to the past impossible so the relationship between cause and effect is maintained." particularly the part about cause and effect.

<comment><USER7> Traveling backwards in time is functionally equivalent to exceeding the speed of light; in fact, an object is traveling faster than the speed of light in one inertial frame of reference if and only if there is a second inertial frame of reference, with relative velocity to the first less than the speed of light, in which it is traveling backwards in time.

Technical matters of relativity aside, consider that you can't actually change how fast you move through time. You can't make time move faster or slower, at least within your own frame of reference. Time doesn't just move in a fixed direction, it moves at a fixed rate. Note that this is pretty close to how special relativity actually works, modulo semantics of "rate" when dealing with time.

There are also thermodynamic considerations. One direction of time does seem to be privileged in terms of entropy. This doesn't necessarily mean that time travel is impossible, as far as I'm aware, but it does mean that "forward" in time isn't completely arbitrary, and reversing that may be thermodynamically unfavored.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> So what's new here ?

We always knew if you travel really fast, time slows down for you, and people on Earth have aged faster. We always knew time moves at a different rate depending on gravity, too. Its there in SH's Brief History. Using BH's and WH's has been talked about for years, too.

<comment><USER3> You're right, that classical special theory of R, but I don't think that's what people have in mind when they think about time travel. If they're so inclined (like me), they think of it as a way to visit a person from the past, e.g. Cleopatra in her imperial boat. Or, going to the year 2500.

As far as I understand, the crucial physical and philosophical problem is: Why is time's direction one way? Why can't we reverse it. Some physicists explain this by saying time moves in the direction of increasing entropy. But WHY does it have to be so? There's no inherent physical law, AFAIK, that says that this must be the case.

In your example the direction is still the same for both people, it's just the difference of inertial frames.

<comment><USER9> That's actually also true. The only thing that physicists have identified so far as being linked to time's directionality is entropy. Pretty much every other aspect of physics works with time's arrow pointed in either direction.

So from a physical point of view, the only thing keeping the egg you dropped from putting itself back together is the slope of the entropy curve associated with that event.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Apart from the quantum foam wormholes, it's just describing almost century-old (wow!) results of special and general relativity. Nothing especially exciting if you know the tiniest amount of physics.

<comment><USER11> Agreed - for us.

But this was printed in a national Sunday paper here in the uk. Which I think is great - my dad was talking about it for ages.

EDIT: huh? my point being that the audience in question, for the most part, have little active interest in physics - thus this was a great way to expose people to some new ideas :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> All of these have been exploited in science fiction that is over 3 decades old, and most of it wasn't new then either.

That doesn't make it less interesting, but it certainly isn't new and it hasn't got much to do with Stephen Hawking.

<comment><USER13> Further support for my idea that Steven Hawking is now fully paralyzed and his speech computer is being remote-controlled by his nurses.

<comment><USER12> I don't think that's in very good taste.

<comment><USER13> Meh, I don't find it to be in unacceptably bad taste. The comment was made more out of sympathy at the horrors of paralysis than out of cruelty or a desire to offend. It's "gallows humour", not "a sick joke".

<comment><USER12> Let's save that discussion for when you've spent a good part of your life in a wheelchair without a means of expressing yourself directly, other than through some electronic gizmo.

You're making a joke at the expense of a guy that has had just about every card in the deck stacked against him and that made in spite of that more of his life and did more for us all than you will probably ever do.

If you don't see why it is in bad taste then I'm really sorry for you, if you think that that was 'out of sympathy' then I must have a big problem understanding English, and I hope I'll never be on the receiving end of your sympathy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> If I visit the future, say 25 years hence, I'd like to be able to look back and see what i did in that time. I'd also expect to see grown up kids, maybe grand-kids.

If i visit the future the way Hawkins suggests, by slowing down my present... I would land up in a future where there's been no me for that period. All there is a memory of 5 years in my mind (while I was traveling in space). There's a missing 20 years. I can't then (hypothetically) jump back in time and see the last 20 years, since i was not "there" during that time.

</comment><comment><USER8> We can't revisit the past, since it's already happened. We can't travel into the future because it's not yet happened.

Am i missing something here ?

</comment><comment><USER6> "Ultimately, scientists may find that only travel into the future is possible"

WOW! I did it! I traveled into the future! Not by much, but I'm at least 1 minute farther into the future than when I started.

The entire article talks only about travel into the future.

Now while that's correct from a scientific point of view, it's not really time travel any more than day to day life is time travel.

<comment><USER14> .. Or how teleportation is the same as walking. :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> In quantum foam, miniscule tunnels between distinct times appear. Is it possible to put something in such a tunnel, and push to widen it? What forces would be exerted to counter that? Or do these "tunnels" obey totally foreign laws of physical interaction?

</comment><comment><USER16> Original: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEP...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1269288/STEPHEN- HAWKING-How-build-time-machine.html)

</comment><comment><USER17> Hawking is great. Not because these types of articles are particularly detailed or illuminating, but because this is the kind of stuff that lures young people into becoming rocket scientists. Go Steven!

</comment><comment><USER18> Time travel and teleportation are _the_ hardest sci-fi dreams to achieve, in my opinion.

We need tesseract level API access before we can hope to use either of them.

<comment><USER19> If we upload our minds into computers, we will be able to code up and inhabit a simulated universe where time travel and teleportation are possible. I wonder if we will want that, though.

<comment><USER8> Here's a quote from today to supplement top post:

Randy D. Allen, a biologist at Oklahoma State University, argued that a smart- enough species could develop a quantum computer and eventually transfer their consciousnesses into it.

"No more inefficient metabolism requiring huge energy input, no chemically derived bodies to wear out, no reproduction, no death, no taxes. Just supermassively parallel collective consciousness with unlimited capabilities," he wrote. "Perhaps, through super symmetry or entanglement, they can "see" or "feel" the entire universe. Maybe, they've gained the ability to manipulate elementary particles and can control its evolution and its fate. They would have become, by any human definition, Gods."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> A few years back there were articles that you could travel back in time, but only to the point when the time travel machine was invented. Now you can't travel back at all.</comment>


Static Website Hosting, Storage and Content Delivery on AWS - <AUTHOR> https://cloudacademy.com/amazon-web-services/courses/static-website-hosting-storage-and-content-delivery-on-aws/

<comment><USER2> (a bit of shameless plugin but since it's related) I'm working on a SaaS project to automatically copy a website as static pages with versioning and pushing them to S3 or github pages as an online backup (to avoid having a blog down due to a spike in traffic for ex), email in profile for more info.

</comment><comment><USER3> The concept is interesting, but I'm wondering about performances of S3 compared to a normal webserver on EC2 or elsewhere. Any clue?

<comment><USER4> Hi Andres, S3 is designed to scale up to very high request rates. However, if your workload exceeds 300 GET requests per second, as suggested by AWS, you can consider Amazon CloudFront for performance optimization.

<comment><USER3> Interesting, thanks. Do you know if the cache on CloudFront can be configured? I am worried about delivering stale content when the website changes frequently

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Can I use a different dns service with AWS services like EC2 or I have to pay for Route 53??

<comment><USER6> You definitely can, the principle is still valid. Anyway, Route53 is extremely cheap, less than a dollar for a million queries per month, is very reliable and it integrates very well with the other AWS services, so it's definitely worth the price, IMO. What alternative services where you thinking about?

<comment><USER5> I already have a domain registered on dreamhost and I didn't want to change nameservers. But reading about the alias concept and its cheapness, as you said, I think I'm going to migrate to R53!

Thank you!

<comment><USER7> DNS, SMTP and such are boring services! R53 is robust cheap and doesn't need maintaining so .. go for it!</comment></comment></comment></comment>


T-Mobile's fixed 5G to cover 250M+ with 300 Mbps+, competing with home ISPs - <AUTHOR> https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/new-t-mobile-s-plans-for-home-fixed-wireless-internet-services-begin-to-take-shape <comment><USER2> 50GB cap. 300 Mbps. That's a 51200 MiB cap if we generously presume the GB is GiB and a speed of 37.5 MiB/sec. 22.7 minutes until your cap runs out.

All these higher speeds on heavily throttled and capped networks just means that you hit your throttle or pay-per-MB cap that much faster.

<comment><USER3> I don't get why this is a good use for a lot of home broadband users? If you can get fiber in the ground to a house, why would you want 5G at home? Caps are going to be an issue with 5G.

I understand that some places are too expensive to run fiber to homes, but for a lot of Americans, for instance, they really should have fiber being run to their homes.

<comment><USER4> Most Americans won't have fiber to the premises unless a local muni provider rolls it out. It's very expensive, and most incumbent ILECs gave up on it (See: Verizon->Frontier). "Should" is dependent on cost recovery of trenching, labor, and equipment costs.

<comment><USER5> If they were able to dig for telephone and power then they can dig for fiber too.

<comment><USER6> Of course they CAN, but what is the motivation? They have no competition and the government doesn't seem to have any interest in finding ways to motivate them. Their cost of bandwidth continues to drop as they continue to increase prices and introduce artificial caps. They're printing money!

<comment><USER7> In many cases, people -- the public -- need to stop thinking of Company X's purpose as "providing Y service".

The focus has really become first and foremost upon "making money". Private profit.

The service becomes, if not incidental, then certainly secondary to this.

Consumer and small business Gigabit Internet in the U.S. was a rare oddity, until Google launched its Fibre initiative.

And for Google, this was to move customer engagement and so ads -- their moneymakers. (And neutralizing competitors' barriers to same.) As the Google idealism continued to be actively suffocated, it was not about Fibre, it was about making money.

Across the ISP industry, fiber deployments have been stalling, where they've not outright been declared dormant if not dead. This has been -- to me, at least -- rather observable in the past few to several years.

What's been happening? Companies have been building and building up to cellular radio enhancements, serving simultaneously mobile users but also -- with a single technology and deployment, and one that has also been exempted from "net neutrality" and also somewhat excused from having to explain its "data caps" \-- traditional fixed installations.

At the same time, telecommunications companies have been severely neglecting their "legacy" copper line services.

 _They_ have decided to move to cellular radio, for all this, and to convince regulators and other public authorities that these deployments meet, or should be allowed to be redefined to "meet", all of their outstanding obligations -- which remain substantial and were granted in return for the monopolies granted to them that have continued to benefit them for so long.

Cellular deployment's cheaper. Especially when you are not required to provide the same / equivalent level of service and capacity. When you have greater authority to manipulate the service and delivery to your own benefit.

And when you exist in an oligopoly and have no fundamental, substantive competition...

You provide enough to avoid losing your position. And the rest is pure profit.

You're making money. The "service" is just a means to that end -- one you make "just good enough" to avoid cutting into said profit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Fits for many use cases but not all. Upload speeds and data caps mean there's a very specific way you can use this type of internet.

I'm glad that this is actually starting to look like real competition. That's ultimately what we need.

<comment><USER9> I haven't seen any claims for latency on 5G, but 4G LTE is just under 100ms, which is not what I'd call competitive with my 1ms fiber...

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> This will be amazing. I used to install Verizon 4GLTE home devices and it could have been great without the horribly low caps on data usage.

If 5G allows for 500GB+ caps, then cable cutting might extend to internet cable cutting as well....

<comment><USER11> I have the feeling they'll exempt their TV service from the data cap, which I've read elsewhere here would be 50gb.</comment></comment>


Apple, China Mobile Sign Deal to Offer iPhone - <AUTHOR> http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304096104579238832743924434

<comment><USER2> Hhhmm.. I'm not sure if it's a good deal.</comment>


How to tack a command onto the end of a long-running Unix task, halfway through - <AUTHOR> https://kev.inburke.com/kevin/the-fg-command-stop-long-running-jobs/

<comment><USER2> Any way to add a pipe?

        $ touch asdf
        $ tail -f asdf
        ^Z
        $ fg; | grep foo
        -bash: syntax error near unexpected token `|'

</comment><comment><USER3> Ctrl-z is shell dependent.

learn to use /proc

<comment><USER4> _learn to use /proc_

That's a bit condescending. You could have gained more credibility by explaining _how_ to do this using proc.

And by the way, /proc is kernel-dependent ;-)

<comment><USER3> I agree with you, some detail would have been better. I'm at work though and don't have to to write an article on it.

I thought, meh that's a bit light as an answer but hoped it might pique someone's interest despite my brevity.</comment></comment></comment>


Zoom's forced app is irresponsible - <AUTHOR> https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/03/zooms-forced-app-is-irresponsible/ <comment><USER2> zoom.com -> "Join a Meeting" > Enter Meeting ID > 'join from your browser.'

Probably took less time for me to do this than for OP to write this 'complaint'.

Wasn't hard really.</comment>


Who was Ponzi -- what the heck was his scheme? - <AUTHOR> http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/wayoflife/12/23/mf.ponzi.scheme/index.html

<comment><USER2> Strangely, Google is your friend:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=ponzi>

Something like the first three hits all give you the answer. Even more strangely, WikiPedia gives you the answer too:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Ponzi>

Did you try looking things up before asking?

<comment><USER2> Sorry, stupid, stupid stupid - I _still_ have to learn the difference between this place and other "forums". That wasn't a question, it was a heading to indicate what the article was about - I see that now.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Wanted: skill in pre-leap lookage.

<comment><USER3> I don't think this is your fault completely - the OP should have _clicked_ and at least looked at the article (or even the URL it was from on the same page) before commenting.</comment></comment></comment>


How Early Exit Disease Stunts the Growth of Midwest Startup Communities - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/how-early-exit-disease-stunts-the-growth-of-midwest-startup-communities/ <comment><USER2> Here's a Chicago Tribune story about Chicago's startup drain that was on the front page recently: [http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/globalcity/ct-global- city...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/globalcity/ct-global-city-talent- drain-met-20151023-story.html)

It seems the most important issue is the chicken-and-egg problem: Chicago doesn't have a large magnate company with lots of b/millionaire founders that then fund the ecosystem. Groupon was once thought to be just that company but hasn't turned out good.

The other problem seems to be plain and simple: being in the middle of nowhere doesn't help. From the article:

"The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign turns out more engineering graduates than any U.S. school except the Georgia Institute of Technology, yet no tech scene has grown around it — or 140 miles north in Chicago. Fewer than half of these engineers remain in the state while 10 to 15 percent have gone to California in each of the past five years"

For a young person, there are many more opportunities to do sports (mountain biking, hiking, skiing, kayaking) in other places.

As a final point: Chicago, long the city of broad shoulders, is not famous for its counterculture, like Seattle or Portland is, so loses that chance for attracting people, too.

<comment><USER3> Yes yes yes. I am from the Chicago burbs and a UIUC engineering alum ('09). Even though I would have preferred to move back to Chicagoland, there were simply not any relevant/compelling jobs in that area, or really anywhere else in the state. Around graduation, I got offers in several different states and inevitably moved. Most of my classmates - at least the ones who decided to continue with engineering after graduation - did the same.

ps - Chicago might not be famous for counter-culture, but it has amazing live comedy and various other fun cultural trends. It is a generally nice place to live and I would have preferred to move back after graduation, if there had been any good work for me there.

<comment><USER4> I think there is a real opportunity for companies to exploit the talent that is generated from Chicago and nearby universities.

Chicago doesn't just have Illinois, but UW Madison, Purdue, UMich, Northwestern, etc. The Midwest is churning out tons of qualified engineers.

And the cost and quality of life is dollar for dollar the best in America.

Also the engineering culture is more geared to industrial and mature technology companies and less to software. There are ton of engineers doing jobs that are vital but HN would probably consider boring. That might explain why there is less entrepreneurship. Engineers have work experience in and are exposed to industries that don't easily lend themselves to entrepreneurship.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps if the investors in these Midwest startups enabled founders to take some funds off the table from a round, it could help to alleviate this problem.

If founders have all the stress of low salary + not much savings + lots of work to do + maybe starting a family, of course a $10M exit starts to look good.

But if they're achieving good results, why not give the founders a small taste of the billion dollar carrot?

<comment><USER6> The article actually suggests this near the end, and discusses some reasons it doesn't happen currently.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I live in the Midwest and would happily consider living here long-term in order to work at jobs like these, except that the jobs are generally terrible. They don't pay well, even by lower-cost-of-living Midwest standards. Yet they do all of the same nonsense that companies do in larger urban areas: open-plan office layouts (even when private working space out here is much cheaper than the already cost-effective prices you'd pay for it in a city), Agile/Scrum crap, various over emphasized alcohol-based social functions, ping pong tables, etc.

Why would a talented person stay around here for that? Most of us who like it out here like it because it's _different_ than Silicon Valley or New York, and it suits our preference better.

You're not going to win with the talented people in the Midwest if you just try to make it feel like Silicon Valley Jr. -- you have to be different, with a whole different ethos that's a bit more about the style of life here. Many people choose to live in the Midwest because they like having more personal space, they want to raise a family, they value frugality and consider cost-of- living carefully, they might possibly actually want to own property some day, and/or they just may not personally derive much value from urban amenities.

But I've never seen start-ups or tech businesses here aim at providing a kind of working life that affords these values. It's all still the same "work hard play hard" bullshit as if by making yet another app or something-as-a-service, we're going to become masters of the fucking universe or something.

That stuff is already stupid even in the urban tech hubs. It just comes off even dumber when you're farther away from the tech hubs.

At any rate, I question the article's claim that there's a talent problem in the Midwest. The problem isn't that there are no talented people. The problem is that companies are not providing the opportunity for a lifestyle that matches up with the values of someone who would prefer to live in the Midwest.

If I have to work a million hours, put up with aggressive deadline culture, deal with Agile/Scrum "sprint cycle" idiocy, and feign social interest in rock climbing while I code or joining the same people I've been working with for 10 straight hours at a bar for 2 more hours of trite conversation where I'll be judged by how much overt social signalling my alcoholic beverage of choice emits, then fuck it. I'm just going to move to a big city and demand a big city wage and career opportunities.

On the other hand, if you can give me what the big city folks can't, like say a private office where I can actually get work done and feel productive instead of listening to the person at the desk next to me chew potato chips, or you can provide me with a work environment where 40 hours is exactly all that's expected, and also is exactly what is _rewarded_ (i.e. you encourage workers to have a substantial life outside of work), and I don't feel like you're just doing a bunch of stuff like whisky night and ping pong to try to affiliate with the cool kids in SV, then we could talk.

<comment><USER8> > Many people choose to live in the Midwest because they like having more > personal space

I've been in the bay area for about a year now and this hits on what has been by far the hardest part of the transition for me, and what will eventually drive me away.

Things are so congested and crowded that it feels like some sort of dystopian novel. And there's also this weird subliminal cultural value that people actually _like_ it. I get judged when I suggest to people that continually waiting in line for basic necessities is maybe a shitty way to live, and that it'd be kind of nice to open my window and not look directly into my neighbor's window. Having come from a very rural upbringing, it's hard to not feel like an outsider.

The rest of your analysis is spot on in my experience too. Some of the most talented people I know live in Nebraska because they want to be close to family. And while the cost of housing is drastically lower, companies also tend to not pay very well at all - and the successful ones instantly try to emulate SV culture instead of having the confidence to be themselves and embrace their own local culture.

<comment><USER9> In one year's time you have observed well and grown wise. I moved to the Bay Area 18 years ago -- I share those observations and agree very much with your conclusions.

> ...weird subliminal cultural value that people actually like it. I get > judged when I suggest...

Yeah there's a bit of a cult to the place, for sure. I guess it requires believing in the Unicorns that the author of the OP alluded to.

> Some of the most talented people I know live in Nebraska because they want > to be close to family.

Yes, and in my experience I find the much of the best talent I know in my clients' businesses in Southfield Michigan and in Japan (auto tech. industry), and for similar reasons -- strong family ties.

<comment><USER8> Thanks. It's been a rough few weeks and it helps to hear that I'm not the only one who feels this way.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> I think Midwesterners are just too conservative for a startup scene to take root here. Venture capital, computers in general even are too new of ideas to depend on. We're used to industries springing up around us, then running away to China or California, so investing in a 10-year plan when the next market crash could destroy the industry utterly seems kind of stupid.

Besides, as the article said, $10M is more than enough to look down on your neighbors for the rest of your life, what more benefit could $10B give you?

<comment><USER11> Well, conservative's a hard call. It's not so conservative that startups or new businesses are impossible, and it's not like everyone you encounter socially will look befuddled at you if you claim to be working for yourself. It's still the US here, and not some culture completely unfamiliar with the entire concept of working for yourself.

It's just that if you ask anyone around here "Would you like $5 million now, or a chance at an unknown percentage of somewhere between $5 billion and $0 in 10 years?", even the entrepreneurial types are going to take that first one most of the time.

Interesting thought: $5million is totally "f you" money around here in the Midwest; that's retire instantly for a fairly nice lifestyle, plus a quite healthy buffer. In Silicon Valley, that's still nothing to sneeze at, but it'll certainly seem like a lot less; a lot more people for your monkey brain to see around you that are still richer, a lot of single houses that can soak up that entire fortune and more, etc. You could retire instantly, but you'll have a lot more pulling you away. I wonder if that has any influence in the results?

And of course there's also the fact that anyone who won't settle for anything less than the % at billions above will move to Silicon Valley. There's a lot of places in the world where you can make a successful startup, sometimes HN even has articles pointing that out, but there's not very many places you can get the rocket-powered VC capital to either grow a unicorn horn or die trying.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> When I read articles like this, all I can think about is Pretty Woman. When the main character laments, "What do we do? We don't make anything." And the response, "We make money."

I don't care for the culture of start-sell-repeat.

</comment><comment><USER13> This hits close to home. I am a software developer in Grand Rapids, Mi and we have a so so burgeoning startup scene here.

We have a couple incubators here but they are not particularly great and their money is expensive with few useful benefits. We have a decent concentration of software developers in town. Cheap office space and ok rents make boot strapping a bit easier. But like everywhere else we don't have nearly enough software developers here on the founders need to start scaling. I can think of a number of companies in town that are having problems due to a lack of devs.

But at least we have large tech meetup scene that likes to share.

</comment><comment><USER14> YC used to do one batch in CA and one out east each year. I see they've moved both summer and winter to the west coast now. Was it that hard to get established in two places that even they couldn't do it?

<comment><USER15> It was because Paul and Jessica were having a kid, and it's disruptive to a child (not to mention quite a hassle) to shuttle between two coasts every 6 months. Palo Alto won out as the nice neighborhood to raise a family in. When YC discontinued the Boston SFP, it was still largely run by the original founders and didn't have many (any?) additional partners.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> Exactly echos complaints about the New Zealand startup scene. The catch phrase here is "The three B" meaning Boat, Bach (holiday house) and BWM. Lots of founders sell out for just $10-$30 million which sets them up nicely but often means the startup/product gets buried inside a big company and jobs move overseas

</comment><comment><USER17> I know multiple amazing developers in the midwest. They work remotely for bay area companies.

</comment><comment><USER18> This also explains why nobody in the Midwest values academia, value isn't imminent unlike hauling around rocks.

<comment><USER19> what are you talking about

<comment><USER18> People in Midwest, I lived there from aged 0-22, value tangible things with present day value.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The simple explanation for this phenomenon: bad founders tend to sell early (if they succeed at all).</comment>


Ask HN: Symfony Framework? - <AUTHOR> How is Symfony going these days. Is it still a big player in PHP Frameworks, or has Laravel completely taken over? <comment><USER2> I think Laravel's popularity, which is greater than Symfony, mandates Symfony's continued experience.

Laravel uses a tonne of Symfony packages under the hood.

The other thing is that I think they serve different purposes.

Laravel makes a lot of decisions for you. There's a structure and conventions out of the box. It's like the Rails of PHP at the moment. This makes it great for small to medium sized projects and especially rapid prototyping.

Symfony doesn't do this. It's a component, configuration based framework. This is great where the flexibility is needed. Larger projects are a prime example.

</comment><comment><USER3> Symfony core components are also the foundation of Silex, which I find to be a more straight-forward and less opinionated framework than Laravel. [https://silex.symfony.com/](https://silex.symfony.com/)</comment>


750 words - <AUTHOR> http://750words.com/

<comment><USER2> Really nice! Always wanted something like this. Just two things as I am middle of testing it out:

1) How do you assure me that my logs are not being read by you on backend? Yes even saying that you won't can being the process of trust. Showing me screenshots of your back-end can be a bonus.

2)On Edit your Account Page, there is no way to go back to home page.

<comment><AUTHOR> I didn't make it so contact the author, just found it on reddit.com/r/books</comment></comment>


PyPedia: a Python IDE and method repository in a wiki - <AUTHOR> http://www.pypedia.com/index.php/Main_Page

<comment><USER2> Here's pretty much the same idea for Scheme instead of Python, which I wrote back in 2005, temporarily up again: <http://wry.me:8080>

An example of what I wanted to do with it: <http://wry.me:8080/page/Partial%20Evaluation> (Only the early bits are working.)

Its own source as wiki pages: <http://wry.me:8080/page/Underlying%20Source%20Code>

Differences I noticed: in my system a page implements a module instead of a function. Code, evaluations, and commentary are mixed in a literate- programming style. Anyone can edit existing code, with a branching version control system for backup (which, er, I never hooked the UI into). It's awfully hacky. Maybe some of these ideas could influence this newer wiki, though.

(Edit: fixed links, added differences.)

<comment><USER2> Also <http://sourceforge.net/projects/skwiki/> by Luke Gorrie, a Scheme wiki in Erlang. (It's even older.)

</comment></comment><comment><USER3> Powered by Wikimedia (PHP): this just feels wrong. Not to mentioned that Wikimedia is pretty crappy system. It's markup and templates are horrible.

<comment><USER4> What do you suggest instead that's in Python?

Also, what markup to you prefer?

<comment><USER5> I'm not the original poster, but MoinMoin is widely considered mature and featureful. I'm guessing they had a good reason not to use it; it may be worth asking them.

<comment><USER6> MediaWiki has been extended a whole lot for dynamic content in Wikipedia. That might be one reason for the author choosing it. There has been work outside Wikipedia in making content features more powerful, with Semantic Mediawiki and DBpedia.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Looks like the site is down -- I couldn't seem to find a cached version anywhere. Here's a discussion on reddit about PyPedia from six months ago posted by the creator of PyPedia:

\- [http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/qq76y/pypedia_a_pyth...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/qq76y/pypedia_a_python_ide_and_method_repository_in_a/)

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not from six months ago. At the time of writing this comment it's only about 8 hours.

<comment><USER7> Reading is hard -- I stand corrected

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Wow, this is pretty awesome.Is there a self-hosting version, somewhere?

<comment><USER9> git clone git://github.com/kantale/pypedia.git

Says it right there on the front page.</comment></comment>


Node.js version 14 available now - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@nodejs/node-js-version-14-available-now-8170d384567e <comment><USER2> Removing --experimental--modules flag, seems like a plan put esm support as stable by the time it goes LTS?

<comment><USER3> exactly</comment></comment>


Computing Your Skill - <AUTHOR> http://www.moserware.com/2010/03/computing-your-skill.html <comment><USER2> TrueSkill is nice because Microsoft published the math. The article is a nice and colorful introduction.

From what i hear the Starcraft 2 matching algorithm is very impressive. What system do they use?

<comment><USER3> My understanding is Blizzard plans to keep the details of the math secret because they don't want the system to be gamed. Considering how seriously people take SC2 I can hardly blame them for this decision.

This raises the question of what it would take to create a ranking system that wasn't susceptible to active "attack" by people trying to game the system.

One aspect of SC2's ranking system that doesn't seem to exist is some sort of skill decay. I used to be a Diamond level player but I haven't played seriously in months. Yet, my rating is still high as if I was that good. It seems like my only option is to log in and get destroyed for a few days to have my rating drop, which is not really something I want to do.

<comment><USER4> Long-term inactivity will probably be taken care of via ladder "seasons" -- when a new season starts, you lose your rank, and your rating will likely be in some provisional state.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Writing a 57-page math paper in something other than LaTex (appears to be Word for God's sake) is nothing short of Herculean.

<comment><USER6> I'm the guilty party, so I can provide some background :)

I used LaTeX in college for my math homework and it worked well for my needs back then. However, it had been a few years since I used it and I thought I would mainly use the accompanying paper to expand on a few things that I thought were too detailed for the blog post.

So I thought "I'll just use Word and it'll make working with the images easy!"

It started off with just a few things but then it grew... and grew... and grew. For example, I recently added a proof of the Gaussian convolution formula that added 10 pages (but helped me better understand what was happening). Over time, the gains I got from easy image support were counter- balanced by the trickier time spent with Word 2007's equation editor. To its credit though, Word 2007+'s equation editor is much better than the previous one.

Regardless, the whole paper is sort of like a 57 page footnote to the blog post to prove that I really did have to cut a lot of things out.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> It seems that describing yourself as a mathematician or calling something you have written for a mathematical paper is becoming increasingly popular.

A math paper is something that has been published in a peer-reviewed math journal. Calling a set of notes that could have been written by a high school student for a math paper is just silly.

Three times in the last four months I have had conversations where someone calling themselves for mathematicians turned out to think that having majored in math and now doing stats, programming, or teaching calculus makes you a mathematician.

Next time I apply for a position I think I'll consider adding "chef" to my CV. After all, I have been cooking regularly for years !

<comment><USER6> I didn't really give much thought to the name other than "it's a paper/document with math in it." I honestly had no intentions (or even hopes) of trying to deceptive anyone into thinking I was a mathematician.

I can see your point though and will be more explicit about just calling this type of accompanying document as "notes" in the future since that term has less formal meaning associated with it.

</comment></comment><comment> n-ion The 3d bell curve reminded me of a Bose–Einstein condensate. :)</comment>


Any web start ups need design work? - <AUTHOR> I am offering to provide design work (layout design and perhaps a logo as well for your prototype) to one start up here free of charge. Hopefully someone who has done some thinking, preparation, and maybe even has something up that needs a redesign.<p>Please post your idea and details, stage of the start-up, if you have a site and need a redesign or its brand new, etc, and/or email me if you are interested. My email is in my profile. <comment><USER2> I'd like to see more of your work. What is your blog/portfolio?

Thanks

<comment><USER3> I found this link in his profile: <http://laksmanv.weebly.com/>

Might be what you're looking for...

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Hi Riskish!

We need a redesign! We're not at a point where we're building the site....but we've been developing the concept and product for the past year. We're finishing the tech spec and will be ready for software dev in Jan...but definitely wanting a logo redesign.

<comment><AUTHOR> email me with details about the project, name, etc. my email is in my profile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> I'm working on a social networking service and would be interested to see if you can help. It's still very much under development but check it out to get a feel. familyengage.com

</comment><comment><USER6> I can really use some help at <http://televite.totalengage.com> in terms of design. As you can see, I suck at it :)

</comment><comment><USER7> We have an interesting and challenging web application that needs a bit of redesign. I promise this will stretch your skills to new highs!

Ray

</comment><comment><USER8> just setup a minimal viable product of a subscription service at www.tuskfairy.com - could certainly use some design help!

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> bpedro, hi there. I have added a link to my portfolio (it's an older version made with weebly) to my profile.

</comment><comment><USER9> You should use "Offer HN:"

<comment><AUTHOR> thanks</comment></comment>


If True, This Could Be One of the Greatest Discoveries in Human History - <AUTHOR> https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-if-true-this-could-be-one-of-the-greatest-discoveries-in-human-history-1.6828318 <comment><USER2> Behind pay wall :-(

<comment><USER3> Outline.com

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> Oumuamua. "It waited in place, like a buoy in the ocean, until the 'ship' of the solar system ran into it."

suggests the object was stationary, until it was [influenced] by our solar system, and made orbit, "in a strange manner" according to previous articles i have read.

here are a couple of helpfuls perhaps.V

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oumuamua](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oumuamua)

[https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/11/07/the-science-behind- th...](https://www.snopes.com/news/2018/11/07/the-science-behind-those-viral- oumuamua-alien-spacecraft-stories/)</comment>